same time by the coming of the
Messiah; it was on particular occasions that the truth of christianity,
and the virtue of Christians imposed silence on the devils. St.
Athanasius tells the pagans, they have been witnesses themselves that
the sign of the cross puts the devils to flight, silences oracles, and
dissipates enchantments.

This power of silencing oracles, and putting the devils to flight, is
also attested by Arnobius, Lactantius, Prudentius, Minutius, Felix, and
several others. Their testimony is a certain proof that the coming of
the Messiah had not imposed a general silence on oracles.

The Emperor Julian, called the Apostate, consulting the oracle of
Apollo, in the suburbs of Antioch, the devil could make him no other
answer, than that the body of St. Babylas, buried in the neighbourhood,
imposed silence on him. The Emperor, transported with rage and vexation,
resolved to revenge his gods, by eluding a solemn prediction of Christ.
He ordered the Jews to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem; but in beginning
to dig the foundations, balls of fire burst out, and consumed the
artificers, their tools and materials. These facts are attested by
Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan, and the emperor's historian; and by St.
Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and Theodoret, Sozomen and Socrates,
in their ecclesiastical histories. The sophist Libanius, who was an
enemy of the Christians, confessed also that St. Babylas had silenced
the oracle of Apollo, in the suburbs of Antioch.

Plutarch relates that the pilot Thamus heard a voice in the air, crying
out:--"The great Pan is dead:" whereupon Eusebius observes, that the
deaths of the demons were frequent in the reign of Tiberius, when Christ
drove out the wicked spirits. The same judgments may be passed on
oracles as on possessions. It was on particular occasions, by the divine
permission, that the Christians cast out devils, or silenced oracles, in
the presence and even by the confession of the pagans themselves. And
thus it is we should, it seems, understand the passages of St. Jerom,
Eusebius, Cyril, Theodoret, Prudentius, and other authors, who said,
that the coming of Christ had imposed silence on the oracles.

OF ORACLES, THE ARTIFICES OP PRIESTS OP FALSE DIVINITIES.

As regards the second sort of oracles, which were pure artifices and
cheats of the priests of false divinities, and which probably exceeded
the numbers of those that immediately proceed from demons, they d